Ghostgrub is a Twitter pick-your-path-adventure-game-thing where you must make choices against some pretty whacked out situations in your everyday life. Will you take the glowing sword from the skeleton guy in your shower, even though you know it’s cursed and it will turn your arm totally evil? Or will you just punch the skeleton’s face off and attempt to flush him down the toilet for being such a big evil jerk? THE CHOICE IS YOURS.

Just a note, at the moment there’s no update schedule for Ghostgrub. I’m just doing it for fun.

You can cast a vote for your preferred choice with other lovely people over at Twitter. The choice that gets the most votes over the 48 hours the poll is live will be what the character will do in the next episode (AND THERE IS NO GOING BACK MY FRIENDS). You will have four choices for the situation you find yourself in. Voting for what choice to make will done using a poll on my account @ghostgrubcomic, so you’ll need an account there if you want to keep up to date and vote on episodes. The latest Ghostgrub episode will be pinned to the top of my account so it should be easy to spot. If there is a tie when it comes to voting, I’ll flip a coin to determine which of the two options you will go for.

An important note – For each comic update there will be two tweets posted in a thread for a single episode of Ghostgrub on Twitter – the actual episode image tweet (like the example above) and the voting poll tweet that follows it. Unfortunately Twitter does not allow polls and images to be posted in a single tweet.

Quests and Rewards

Sometimes in Ghostgrub you will be presented with some kind of quest, but it’s completely up to you whether you actually want to do it or even finish it once you have started it. Quests could be you just be trying to have a shower but you can’t as there’s a jerk skeleton sitting in it who refuses to move or you could be delivering a cursed skull down to the park for some purple dude who is offering you three packets of chips as a reward.

You can get rewards for ‘completing’ quests, but what these rewards are is anyone’s guess. Sometime they might be super useful rewards such as some sweet armor that increases your base HP forever or a cursed chest that randomly gives you a weapon or item based on a random dice roll I do. Heck it might even be a real life reward like a penny I send to you through Paypal if you voted for the last episode in the quest. Or it might just be a pair of nail clippers, WHO KNOWS. You also get experience points when you complete quest which in turn can level up your character (see ‘Experience Points and Leveling Up’ below for more info).

Be aware though, that if you start a quest and don’t finish it, the people/creatures who are involved in the quest may get a little cranky at you if you don’t do what you say you are going to do. Some may even turn on you, so ya, keep that in mind.

Here are some examples of some sweet rewards you could possibly get if you follow through and complete a quest:

Fast Travel Power – A magical power you have that allows you to open up travel portals to main places you have already visited, such as your home or the park. It takes time and deep concentration for you to open up the portal, so you need to be sitting down with your legs crossed and eyes closed to do it. You can’t do it when on the move or in battle.Eternal Treasure Chest – A sweet chest where you can store any item you want there forever without fear of that item getting stolen or lost. You can only access it at home or you may find it somewhere during a quest. It likes to get around.Merchant Summoning Seed – A seed that you eat but it gets permanently stuck in your throat. But if you do eat it (and survive choking on it) you can summon several different merchants who sell different things. You can only summon one merchant every 10 episodes of Ghostgrub, so use it super carefully (there will be a count down counter for it on the Ghostgrub episode for you). You can still buy things from merchants the old fashioned way by just finding them, it’s only limited when you summon them to you using the seed.Demon Chest – A flaming chest with a creepy face that is guaranteed to give you a sweet weapon or better whenever you open it. (see ‘Weapons and Armor’ below for weapon classes)

Oh ya, and if you agree to a quest but don’t make the necessary steps to actually go ahead and start the quest but selecting unrelated options/getting distracted, you can actually forget about the quest (the option to start the quest won’t be presented to you again in the choices). You may remember about the quest if a character (like the person who gave you the quest) reminds you of it, but they probably won’t be happy you have just been fluffing around rather than getting on with the job. And again, if you forget about doing a quest completely, don’t expect a nice welcome from creatures that we involved in the quest (example – mother vampire down at the park when you fail to deliver her baby to her…)

Weapons and Armor

An important note: you can hold one item, one piece of armor and one weapon at any time. You cannot hold more than one of each of these at one time.

Weapons and armor can be purchased, found, received as a quest reward or sometimes even constructed if you have the right materials around you (who wouldn’t want a sword made out of bones from a skeleton king?). Weapons come in all shapes and sizes, and some you might not expect. How much damage your weapon does depends on how awesome it is by falling into one of the below categories. The higher the potential dice roll, the higher the potential damage will be. If you manage to attack someone when their guard is down (e.g. you ambush someone) you do double the damage to them. As an example, if you ambush attack someone from behind and do 5 damage, you’ll actually do 10 damage. This also applies for damage done by companions (see ‘Companions’ below). Here’s a breakdown:

Info on combat can be found below in Monsters/Creatures/Combat. Some weapons can cause damage back onto you when you use them, notably cursed weapons which deal a third of any damage done directly back onto you, DANG!

Armor provides a boost to your base HP (depending on how awesome it is) along with being a last-chance life saver if you take damage from something that would usually make you die. For example, if you get chomped on by a vampire king while wearing armor and you have 3HP but the damage you get from being chomped on is 7, your armor will break and your HP will be reduced to just 1. If this ever happens, it might be best to get out of the situation. You can only be wearing one piece of armor at one time but you can swap out armor if you find another piece that you think is better than your current one (you can’t wear four helmets at once for example, sorry). Once your armor breaks, it is usually gone forever 🙁

Items

Items can be so many different things in Ghostgrub, from a drinking straw to an inflated frog you just inflated with the drinking straw (it can basically be anything you can fit in your pocket). You can only hold one item at any one time but you can use the item as many times as reality allows, so think carefully about using that inflated frog as a soft pillow as it may pop (OR WORSE). If you come across another item you think would be better suited to your needs rather than the current one you have you will have the option to swap the items. Be careful though, if you do swap out your boring drinking straw for that sweet looking vampire skull on the ground instead of running from the massive hungry ghost behind you, you could become ghost grub (see what I did there? heh…). There will be temptations my friends, it’s just up to you if you want to take the risk.

Gold

Your character also gets gold to spend on whatever you may need gold for, such as armor or weapons. Gold received depends on the total retweet count at the end of the Twitter voting poll for the current Ghostgrub episode. Retweets on the actual episode image tweet count towards the gold count, not the voting poll tweet. Quote retweets will not count towards getting gold as they don’t appear on the retweet counter so keep that in mind! You can save up your gold and there is no limit for how much of it you can carry, just be aware that a lot of creatures out there are jealous of your ability to somehow generate gold and probably want to steal you away and marry you. I would too, so just a heads up. So here’s the deal:

Retweeting a Ghostgrub episode from the main story which currently has an active voting poll running on Twitter = 1 gold

HOORAY!

Hitpoints, Damage and DEATH

NOW LET’S TALK DEATH, and health! You can die in Ghostgrub, and if you do die you will lose half your held gold along with your weapon, armor and held item (dang looting scavengers, amirite?). You will also go down 5 levels and your experience points will be reset to 0, which SUCKS (see ‘Experience Points and Leveling Up’ below).

When you die you will become a SPOOKY GHOST and no one will be able to see you or interact with you other than other ghosts and undead creatures such as skeletons and vampires. You don’t have any neat powers when you are a ghost (being a new ghost is rather lame, it takes time to get cool ghostly powers). You will then have 5 turns/episodes to find some way to come back to life and if you manage this, you will become alive again and keep everything you would lose if you did fully die except for half your gold (that gets taken away regardless as punishment for losing all your hitpoints in the first place). If you can’t find a way to come back to life after the five turns then you loose everything mentioned above and you will respawn in your house, thinking everything you just experienced was just a dream.

You have a base HP of 60 and you die if your HP reaches zero. You lose hit points whenever you do something a bit silly, such as getting punched in the face by an angry dude or eating a frog you found in your packet of favourite chips. You can increase your base HP through your piece of armor, but if your armor breaks your base HP goes back down to 60.

You can possibly take ‘FREAKIN HUGE’ damage, ‘big’ damage, ‘medium’ damage or ‘little’ damage. Here’s the rundown for all four-

FREAKIN’ HUGE damage is when you take damage from something that will probably kill you if they hit you critically, like you get attacked by death himself. How much damage you take/HP you lose from big damage is determined by 3 rolls of 20 sided die, with 60 HP being the most you could lose. Let’s hope this never happens!

Big damage is when you take damage from something life threatening or that could really mess up your life, like you fall off a cliff onto some dang rocks or get stabbed by a jerk skeleton knight in the face. How much damage you take/HP you lose from big damage is determined by the roll of 12 sided die, with 12 HP being the most you could lose.

Medium damage is when you get hurt by something that will probably leave a nice big scar on you if your survive the incident. An example would be having a medium powered magic missile hit you in the face or getting stabbed in the leg by a jerk skeleton knight. How much damage you take/HP you lose from medium damage is determined by the roll of 8 sided die, with 8 HP being the most you could lose.

Little damage is when you get hurt by something that isn’t going to kill you but it may burn away an eyebrow or leave a bump on you head. An example would be having a little rock dropped on your head from a cliff or getting bitten on the ear by little vampire dude who thinks you look yummy. How much damage you take/HP you lose from little damage is determined by the roll of 4 sided die, with 4 HP being the most you could lose.

Don’t worry. I promise I’ll be super honest when it comes to what number I roll when you take damage. I’m not a jerk, all the time <3

You can regain hit points by eating roast chickens which can be found randomly throughout the world. You may need to look around for them, or you just might get lucky if that angry dude you punched because he’s a jerk drops one, who knows! Eating a roast chicken gives you back 30HP. Other food items can give HP or take away HP depending on what they are. HINT: Do not eat fire or knives as they take away pretty much all your hit points every time.

Experience Points and Leveling up

It is possible for you to level up your character in Ghostgrub. You level up by earning experience points which can be done several ways including:

– Liking the Ghostgrub episode from the main story which currently has an active voting poll running on Twitter.

– Defeating enemies in combat.

– Completing quests.

Every 7 times you level up your HP is increased by 5 along with how much damage you can do via an attack bonus. The only exception to this is from when you go from level 1 to level 2, where you gain 5HP and your first attack bonus. Just a note that the current level you can get to is 50, where you max HP is 105 and your max attack bonus is +10. Naturally, it’s get harder to level up as you go on.

Attack bonuses get added onto any damage you do. So if I rolled a 12 sided dice and you got a 7 for damage but you had an attack bonus of 2, you would do 9 damage. Hooray! It is also possible for you to go down levels, the main way being if you die. If you do die, you go down by 5 levels and your experience points will be reset to 0 (if you are level 1 when you die, you just stay at level 1). There may be other ways to go down levels (like if you get a really, REALLY nasty curse for example) but the main way you will lose levels is by dying.

Monsters/Combat/Loot

The world is full of monsters man. Every thing that you choose to attack (or everything that chooses to attack you) has hit points just like you. Their hit points depend on what they are and what health condition they are currently in. So Mr. Skeleton man with a broken leg will probably have low hit points (like 4 or something) while Death’s right-hand-man could have 200 or something nuts! AW JEEZ MAN THAT’S NUTS.

Combat in Ghostgrub works on a turn based system, kinda like Pokemon. You get a turn to make your move, then your opponent moves, then you, then your opponent until either one of you reaches 0 HP or you or your opponent decide to try to stop fighting or run away. You will generally get a chance to scope out your opponent first before you make your initial first attack (unless you get ambushed or betrayed or something), so think about whether you can take on your opponent and survive. During combat you generally get one attack option, one or two other options depending on whats going on in the situation (like trying to make the loose rocks on the cliff above your enemy fall down onto them) and one other option to try and run away or stop fighting. These options may change depending on what the exact situation you are in currently is however.

Defeated creatures may drop loot if you are lucky! Loot drops depend on how tough your defeated enemy was. Loot can be gold, weapons, armor, items, and sometimes you can even use the body of whatever you just defeated to make yourself a new weapon (you sicko). You also get experience points when you defeat an enemy, depending on how tough they are.

Curses

Man, you don’t want to be cursed, guys. Being cursed sucks. Curses come in all shapes in sizes, from simple curses that simply don’t let you leave a certain area to some really super nasty curses that can turn you into a lemon or make you lose 3HP at the start of every Ghostgrub episode, DANG! Curses can be removed by some high powered magic users for a nice chunk of your gold, or sometimes by drinking a potion or similar.

Companions

If the situation allows or you are just lucky, you will be able to have a companion who can help you put during your quest. Companions have their own hit points and once they reach zero HP they can also die like you. It is well known that the power of roast chicken can fully restore their hit points though, so there’s that. Or you could just ditch them somewhere, meh, it’s up to you. Companions can be super useful in battle as they attack with you and add additional damage onto your opponent. Damage dealt depends on how much HP they currently have.

For example, if you had a tiny vampire companion who had 8/20HP remaining, they would only do up to 8 possible damage to an opponent. If they had full HP, they would do up 20 possible damage, so it pays to keep your companions healthy! If you manage to ambush someone which does double the damage you would usually do, the damage also doubles for the damage done to you companion. So if you companion rolls a 19 for damage and it’s an ambush attack, they would actually do 38 damage, NICE.

Merchants

Merchants are people/creatures that will trade you stuff for that sweet, sweet gold you have on you. If you don’t have enough gold to buy that one thing you just can’t quite afford, you can possibly sell your item, weapon or armor that you have on you to make that deal. HAGGLE WITH THEM, MY FRIENDS. Sometime the merchant might want something else from you if you aren’t willing to sell your stuff, like they may have a sidequest or of you to complete instead or if you are SUPER lucky, they may just want something like a smooch for you. THAT WILL BE AN INTERESTING DAY IF YOU EVER GET THERE MY FRIENDS.